Dr. Inez Fung, Professor at University of California, Berkeley, presents the 2017 Graduate Students' Distinguished Visiting Lecture in Atmospheric Sciences. She will be speaking on "Trust but Verify: the Science of Climate Treaty Verification."

About the lecture: The world’s nations are gathering to pledge targets for future greenhouse gas emissions. How well can we determine whether a nation is meeting its emission targets?

Gases are mixed rapidly, albeit incompletely, in the atmosphere. This rapid mixing confounds the problem of climate treaty verification. I will review the global carbon cycle, the activities that release CO2, and how the land and oceans have absorbed about half the CO2 we have emitted into the atmosphere.

I will also review the Measurement, Reporting and Verification (MRV) of climate treaty verification. A new satellite, the Orbital Carbon Observatory 2, successfully launched on July 2 2014, delivers unprecedented observations of CO2 variations in the atmosphere. I will present a “top-down” approach for estimating carbon dioxide emissions from the atmospheric CO2 variations. Satellite and in-situ CO2 observations together with raw weather observations are assimilated into a global carbon-climate model, so that surface sources and sinks of CO2 can be inferred as required for mass conservation.

Registration: Please register in advance to ensure a seat: events.uw.edu…. Registration will be open until 4/5/17, the day before the lecture. If there is still room on the night of the lecture, we will allow unregistered guests to attend.

We look forward to seeing you at the lecture! Please share this event with your colleagues who may be interested.